Jerrod Carmichael on Love, Sex, Honesty and His Special “Don’t Be Gay”

MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Christiane. Jerrod Carmichael, thank you so much for joining us.

JERROD CARMICHAEL, COMEDIAN, “DON’T BE GAY”: Thanks for having me, Michel.

MARTIN: So, a lot of people love your work. They’ve followed your work, they’ve followed you through thick and thin. But for people who don’t know your work, and they only know your latest project. What would you say?

CARMICHAEL: I would, I would say I think it’s an, an hour of good standup comedy. I, I think you know, I, I’ve, I moved to LA with the hopes of being like a funny comedian. And I like experimented with form for many years. And this is like, I think my best work. My best outing doing like, kind of traditional standup comedy. It’s like jokes and storytelling. And that was the, the hope was that people would laugh. That’s just like an update on someone’s life in a relationship, trying to figure out what to do with like, aging parents, you know, like, it, I I think it’s just like kind of classic in that way.

MARTIN: You seem very relaxed, I have to say.

CARMICHAEL: I feel good. I you know just had the physical, my cholesterol is down, you know, so I feel good.

MARTIN: You’ve alluded to this, you kind of pushed the boundaries of comedy and self-discovery in a way that is often very funny, but also very poignant and has some pain points in it. You’ve gone from Rothaniel to your HBO reality series, which is very real and raw kind of led us into some really raw, private moments. Yeah. And now your latest project, this standup special is, Don’t be Gay.

CARMICHAEL: Yeah.

MARTIN: And I don’t even, I don’t feel really good saying that, but I’m like –

CARMICHAEL: I know, I know.

MARTIN: That was your idea.

CARMICHAEL: I love you so much. I love you, you reacting to it is my favorite thing. I <laugh>.

MARTIN: Okay. Well, now that I’ve said it once, I’m not gonna say it again. But why is it that, why is that the title?

CARMICHAEL: Well, because I, you know, after coming out, it made me reflect, I’ve been doing like a lot of like reflection and therapy and all of those things. Like just reflecting on my life and what I was hiding and why I was hiding and thinking about masculinity a lot.

(PLAY CLIP)

CARMICHAEL: I named it after like, my like internal monologue that I’ve had, like going on repeat in my life. Just like, don’t be gay. And it’s, it’s caused me to be so self-aware. (07:17): It’s like the burden of self-awareness. Which is a strength in comedy because you get to talk about that. But like, the burden is that you always like watching your mannerisms and how you interact with people and how you move in a room and like, how I talk and how I’m holding my hands. Like all these things I’m like, I’m hyper aware of. And so I, I, the – it’s kind of ironically named, you know, just because it’s like that, that’s what I was telling myself and what I was fighting. That was the biggest fight of my life.

MARTIN: Well, it does – it’s a bookend to Rothaniel in the sense that Rothaniel is, talks about being in the closet, really. It is the public way in which you announced yourself. But it takes you on that kind of trip. And is this, in a way, is this the bookend? This is like the –

CARMICHAEL: You know I, I would, I would call it more really an update. I think my career is, is always just like an, an update to exactly where I am at, at the moment. This is my first time in, and hopefully the only time in like a, in a relationship that allows me to like, see myself and I’m living with someone else. And like, now I’m like writing a lot of material around that. And so it’s an update to exactly where I am in, in my life. Before and like in reality show, I, I didn’t think I deserved love. It was a lot of shame. It was a lot of confusion around like how I would settle. I didn’t think I would settle and, and now just feeling settled and, and, you know, having other sources of conflict in my life. This is just where I am right now. And, and the, the next project hopefully will just be an update to exactly where I am then. But like now I’m like, you know, in a relationship, in an open relationship, I’m, you know, 38, my cholesterol’s down 35 points, Michel.

MARTIN: Well, there you go. I mean, it’s kind of all done, right?

CARMICHAEL: Yeah. Yeah.

MARTIN: Well, the relationship part is so interesting to me because the kind of “married guy comedy” is its own genre. Right?

CARMICHAEL: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

MARTIN: Dating guy comedy is its own genre. Married guy comedy is its own genre. Now. I don’t, you didn’t indicate whether you and Michael are married. You said you have an open relationship.

CARMICHAEL: No, but you know what’s funny? I propose, I propose like three times a month. He keeps saying no to me. I propose all the time, and usually at the end of an argument, I, I gotta talk that through in therapy. Like, something’s wrong. But at the end of an argument, I was like, let’s just get married. And he’s like, no, he just walks away from me.

MARTIN: The other thing that’s, it’s, I think, you know, in sort of traditional like married guy comedy that people are used to, or even married woman comedy maybe Joan Rivers being an example of that, extreme example.

CARMICHAEL: Yeah.

MARTIN: Is you, you sort of play off your differences. In your case, the differences that you play off of are racial. Right? Because your boyfriend is white.

CARMICHAEL: Right. Yeah.

MARTIN: And so you, you talk about that. But there one, there’s one joke you tell about how he was the one who wanted to have the open relationship and you had a different idea.

(PLAY CLIP)

CARMICHAEL: Like that was, that’s the traditional way. It’s just like, open relationship is strange. It’s so strange. And it goes against everything I was taught about marriage and relationships and like keeping someone happy. And it forces me to have a very difficult conversation all the time. It does not get easier. It’s an honest conversation, but it’s the hardest conversation ever all the, the time.

MARTIN: The other – what the other thing you play off of is communication styles.

(PLAY CLIP)

MARTIN: I wasn’t really sure how to take that, but say more about that. Is that a communication style? Do you think that was kind of a –

CARMICHAEL: Yeah, well that’s, that’s, that’s upbringing. That may be black, white. That may be like a certain it may, it may be – just where I’m from, there was a threat, like, you, you say the wrong thing, you speak in the wrong tone, like there was a threat. Like, you know, like my mom would go get a switch from the tree. Like, I, there, I wasn’t allowed to like, just communicate freely, let’s, let’s just say. Like, it’s part of what makes you a comedian is finding creative ways to say what you mean. You know, like, because there, there was a threat or just at school or anything, there’s a, there, there’s a threat to like, just saying something.
My boyfriend’s able to just ex – he was able to express himself without violence. And I noticed that in the house. I’m like, wow. The way – I like in, in a different environment I could punch you right now and everybody would be on my side. But I’m not in that environment. Yeah. Yeah. I’m not in that environment anymore. But it makes me think about – I think about communication styles, like living with someone who didn’t grow up the way I grew up. It’s very, it is interesting to me.

MARTIN: But that’s all of us. I mean, I think that’s why the program, the hour, the special is about you as a black gay man in this world who’s come into his own. But I think, isn’t that partly why everybody’s laughing because they realize, oh yeah, I wasn’t, none of us is married to the person we grew up in the same house with–

CARMICHAEL: Yeah, yeah.

MARTIN: Or this apartment with or whatever, you know?

CARMICHAEL: Yes. And it makes you reflect, I have a line of a special, it’s like I take anything that they do to better themselves as a personal indictment against me. Like, just like, like, like he wakes up before me and it makes me feel lazy. You know? Like, and, and it’s like that, that type of thing. You, you’re comparing always comparing. You’re like, oh, you do things differently than me.

MARTIN: You, okay. You have some, there’s some really personal things in here. One of the things that I found interesting is how many people have seen in your work through time a comfort for people who cannot say the things who, who have experienced the things that you’ve experienced, but don’t have the words to express them. And it’s comforting for them to feel like, oh, I’m not the only one who feels that way. I’m not alone in this, you know. I’m – that self-doubt that internalized homophobia, that struggle with being free of it and stuff like that. And I just wondered if that’s, do you ever think about that? Do you, do people stop you on the street and say, Hey, man, you, you gave me words that you – you said something that I felt but couldn’t say. Does, does people ever say that to you?

CARMICHAEL: They, they do. I, I’m actually stopping myself from crying in this moment because that is a – I, I haven’t felt responsibility in, in art before. I thought I was just, I, I was just talking and, and I, I just say what I want and express myself how I, how I want. And then in recent years, I’ve started to feel a responsibility to put words to feelings which is different from…. just like before I just threw grenades and would just say, have a contrarian point and just say things, you know? ’cause I thought it was funny. But now, I do feel a responsibility to be honest and to articulate myself in a way that is, you know, true to the emotion. And it’s my joy to do that. And, and it’s my like, pleasure to be able to do that. And it, it’s like some of the best feedback in my life is that. When, when people stop me on the street and they say like, oh, I’ve been feeling this way, and you put words to that, is the, the great joy of my life.

MARTIN: Does it ever feel like a burden, though? I mean, you’ve had a lot of public figures throughout history in different fields that are ostensibly entertainment, you know, like sports, right? People who say things like, I don’t wanna be your role model, so just leave me alone. And I just wonder, does this recognition that people are looking to you now, does that, does that change anything about the way you’re approaching the work?

CARMICHAEL: Well, that’s part of the reason – part of the reason I, I don’t like search my name on Twitter anymore is because one, bad things hurt your feelings, right? Yeah. That’s just a fact. Like, you read something about, you know, your work or your appearance or anything, and, and it can hurt. But even good things can cause you to get stuck. And part of the responsibility as an artist is to articulate true emotion, true feelings. And you can’t — I think we see this a lot. Like like the, the downside of that is like, people like having kind of the hero complex, right? And it’s like, all right, I’m gonna carry all these people on my back. But then what happens is you stop being a human being. Like it’s easy to like, like to be a hero, and then you like hide the shades of yourself that are important to show. I don’t know why this like example, I, you know, forgive me, I, I like, I don’t want to get in trouble for, for this, but like this… the example that always comes to mind, and I felt this way since I was a kid, is that you, like Martin Luther King is like this incredible man who like, who maybe is guilty of a few indiscretions, right? I, I, to me, the indiscretions is part of what makes him great, is that he also made mistakes, but was capable of doing something beautiful and amazing. And to me, like when you hide the, the, when you hide that part, like when it’s like buried, then it’s like, it, it dehumanizes them. My favorite artists are ones that say, alright, I’m gonna show you the bad side too. Like, it, not it, not to celebrate it, but just to tell you what happened. This is how I felt, this is what I did wrong. And to show that too, is it, it makes interesting art, but it also makes an interesting person.

MARTIN: We are in a political moment when there is a lot of I’ll say hostility directed at some of the groups that you belong to. There’s yeah, there hostility. I mean —

CARMICHAEL: Oh, it’s scary.

MARTIN: It’s hostility and a sense of resentment directed at the the, at sort of public expressions of blackness and of queerness. So I was just wondering if, if the political environment in any way affected your thinking about what to talk about, given that.

CARMICHAEL: It’s all the more reason to show and tell everything to me, right? Because like, I’m not gay because I like to like, hold hands with a man, you know, and we wear our white robes and we hold hands and we, and we go to church like the other, like, that’s not the part that makes me gay. I’m gay ’cause of the stuff I talk about in the special and like, that’s just real. And I want to, I want to talk about that. I don’t wanna pretend to be something else, you know, for the po–. And I think that’s really, really important. And to your point, things are getting really scary. Nobody’s safe. Roe vs. Wade being over– I can’t believe that. Like, I, like I thought that was like written in a stone tablet, like, I thought, like, and so they’re like, they’re coming for everything. Like, they’re coming for everybody. And so, like, it’s everybody’s responsibility now until like, I don’t know, to stand firm in who you are. And like, to me, identity po– identity politics show, like often shows one side of the identity. And I, I think it’s important to show it all, I guess is all, is all I’m saying. And I, and I find that a part of my responsibility.

MARTIN: But is this another way of saying that gay people are normal and that the sex, the sex that, that you have is normal?

CARMICHAEL: Yes. The, the, and you know what else, you know what else I found is common shame, guilt these things are – it is not like – it is easy to say like, oh, you’re gay, you felt a lot of shame. Everybody feels shame. I, I think I say this in a special, everybody’s in the closet about something. Like, I, I think everybody holds something really close to their, their, their chest that they don’t wanna share with anybody. ’cause They feel like if somebody finds out, then they won’t be loved. They’ll make them unlikable, make them unlovable. And like, you hot. Like you could be gay, straight anything. And you can, you can have those feelings. And to me that’s, that, that’s the part I’m trying, I’m sharing my, my conflicting emotions about sex and, and my desire for sex and like showcasing my sexuality. Like I’m showing conflicting emotion about that because I think everybody has conflicting emotion about that. And, and, and so yeah. That, that’s, that’s what like talking to my friends about, like their wives, I’m shocked by how much, like how much overlap there is just on a, on a, like, just on a human level. You know?

MARTIN: Well, before I let you go, you know, if Rothaniel was about, you know, the fear, right? Of being seen and Don’t Be Gay is about, I would say it’s about the joy.

CARMICHAEL: Yeah.

MARTIN: Of standing in your truth and the joy of kind of taking off the, the taking off the mask. Right. How DO you feel now that you were able to, that you chose to take off the mask? How, how are you?

CARMICHAEL: Good. Good. I mean, it was the best decision of my life. It, it changed everything. That actually is probably what lowered the cholesterol, 35 points, to be honest with you. Like, that probably is what, like, part of what did it. And now it’s like a whole new set of problems that, that I’m dealing with. I’m like, okay, yeah, okay. You’re out. And I had like, I had like a grace period where all of my mistakes were being celebrated by my friends. It was like, no, good for you. Good for you. Jerrod just li just live your truth, Jerrod. Oh, we’re so proud of you. We’re so proud of you. And now in this relationship, it’s like, oh, all right. You’re, you’re an adult, and you like, no, you have responsibility and you have like a person that you’re responsible for. And like, now I’m hit with like a, like, like really the real test, you know? But, but I feel so much better about just being honest about who I am. Like, it, it’s, it actually changed my life.

MICHEL: Well, I can’t wait to see what you do next.

CARMICHAEL: I’m so happy you took the time to talk to me. This is felt really, really good. I want you to get outta DC just this weekend.

MICHEL: Okay, well, we’ll, we’ll figure that out. Yeah. Jerrod Carmichael, thank you so much for talking with us today.

CARMICHAEL: Thank you, Michel. Thank you very much.